Fire Combat

One-pager. Ranged combat is the simplest application of the One Rule — one task against situational modifiers, not an opposed contest; you don't parry a bullet. But it rests on four facts almost every game skips: to shoot a thing you must know (or think you know) where it is; you must aim; firing disturbs your aim (recoil); and the target doesn't want to be hit.

One shot, one roll

A shot is a Firearms (or Archery, Heavy Weapons) roll — Score × EF, roll under — and that's the whole of it; there is no defence roll, because the target can't block the bullet. Everything interesting lives in the Ease Factor, and the skill's BEF already bakes in the usual case: a trained, calm shooter putting a round into a static target at short range — pistol-practice conditions. The world adds and subtracts from there.

(A firearm is still forgiving — thirty minutes' training makes you genuinely dangerous — but that shows up in the skill formula, not the BEF: Archery is a hard, strength-hungry ½-skill you spend years getting good at. The gun is easy to be adequate with; the bow is not.)

What moves the ease factor

Each of these is the One Rule's "challenge at a glance" made concrete for shooting. Reach for the ones that bite; ignore the rest:

• How good an idea do you have of where it is? — cover, lighting, smoke and weather, your own eyesight. You shoot at where you think the target is.
• Blocked, or merely hidden? — the distinction nearly every game botches: concealment hides; cover stops bullets — and most interior walls, and plenty of exterior ones, stop nothing. Only hidden? You can still fire, at a penalty for not seeing them. Behind real cover? Its Protection eats the shot (see Damage).
• Moving or still? — a mover is harder.
• How far? — range (and weapons shed Damage Class with distance — see Damage).
• How large a target is presented? — a full silhouette, a head, a hand past a doorframe. Calling a sliver is the same up-front penalty as any called shot.
• How well balanced is the shooter? — set and braced, or off-balance / firing on the move (an Intense Action split).
• How carefully aimed? — taking a bead is its own beat and its own roll; see Aim is a shot that doesn't go off, below.
• How well is the weapon handled? — its performance modifier, your familiarity, its fit to the job.
• Did you see the last shot land? — spot your fall of shot and you correct: a bonus to the follow-up.
• Did the last shot buck you off target? — recoil: repeat or rapid fire past the first shot takes a penalty until you re-acquire.

The BEF is the careless shot, not the careful one

Set the baseline where a shooter starts, and let good practice earn its way up. The aimed-attack skills — Firearms, Archery, Heavy Weapons — carry a BEF of 4, one lower than the usual 5, and that 4 describes someone who raises the weapon and fires. It is not someone who took a bead, braced, and picked their moment. Those are bonuses, and they should be, because of an asymmetry that has nothing to do with the maths:

A player will remember a bonus for doing the sensible thing. Nobody reliably remembers a penalty for skipping it.

"Unaimed: −2" and "BEF two lower, aimed: +2" are arithmetically identical and behave completely differently at a table. A bonus is claimed — the person who benefits is the one who has to remember it, and that is the only bookkeeping arrangement that has ever worked. A penalty must be imposed — the GM has to remember it and be the one to apply it, and a forgotten penalty silently makes everybody better than they should be, invisibly and permanently. A forgotten bonus, by contrast, is self-correcting: the player notices, and says so.

So the rule of thumb throughout: price the good habit, not the omission. Aim, brace, take your time, use the right tool, get a spotter — these earn modifiers. Failing to do them earns nothing, which is punishment enough.

Short-circuit it

You never run that list in full. Assume a trained, competent, calm shooter — the BEF already covers it — and add a modifier only where the situation genuinely departs from "the range." Ranged combat stays a one-roll affair; that's the point.

Modifiers follow what you describe, not labels

Distrust the shorthand other games hand out — "target unaware, +2." Unawareness is not a bonus in itself; it is time and freedom to aim carefully, and the bonus comes from the careful aim you then take. Quick-draw hip-fire at an oblivious target dummy? The dummy's obliviousness buys you nothing. Price what the character actually does.

This is the general shape of it: the table rewards what a player narrates. Describe taking cover, steadying on the doorframe, waiting for the mark to turn — and earn the modifiers those actions deserve. Describe something reckless and eat the penalty — though a reckless choice that's good story is often worth the in-game cost. Punished by the dice, rewarded at the table.

Area fire — making a space dangerous

Most shooting in a close fight isn't aimed at anyone. It's area fire: blind or suppressive rounds thrown at a doorway, a window, a stretch of street to keep heads down and stop people breaking cover. It doesn't target a person — it makes an area dangerous to be in. Anyone caught in the beaten zone, crossing it, or breaking from cover through it risks a hit (resolve as a chance per exposed target — roughly one in QR of the rounds finds someone in the zone). Its worth is tactical, not a body count: pin the enemy, deny the ground, cover a teammate's rush — the spread-don't-concentrate logic from Intense Action. Full-auto and covering fire are the same idea with more lead.

A shot is several actions

"I'm just going to shoot him" is a statement of intent, not a single action — it plays out as discrete beats: draw, take a bead, fire, clear a jam, drop the magazine, reload. If shooting is all you're doing they simply happen in sequence, turn by turn, and the cost is in the slow ones. A reload is the usual culprit: a heavy or complex weapon's is measured in whole turns; a small, simple weapon's in a hit to your Initiative for the turn (which already bundles reaction speed and situational awareness). Doing anything else while you shoot — moving, covering a second door — is the Intense Action split: primary focus, worse at the rest.

Aim is a shot that doesn't go off

Aiming isn't a free action or a special case — it's a fire action that points the weapon instead of discharging it. Roll your Firearms exactly as if shooting, against the same situational modifiers, and if you succeed the weapon is on the target. What the roll buys is set by how well you did it:

Your bead = 5 − QR of your last aim. It applies to your next beat — including your next aim.

This is the One Rule's ordinary Build chain, not a special case: a prior result feeds the next at 5 − QR. Aim is simply a Build chain you're allowed to repeat.

Where the old flat +3 went. Earlier editions handed you taking a bead as a flat +3 and left the BEF high. Now the BEF is one lower and the bead is earned — a rough aim gets you the old number back, and a good one beats it. Same shot, better bookkeeping (see below).

A bead is not a sticky bonus — it's a position you have to keep. Older editions had taking a bead hand you a flat +3 that sat there until you did something else. This doesn't. Your bead lasts one beat. Spend that beat shooting and you spend the bead; spend it aiming again and you re-roll — at your current bead, so a good bead makes a better one likelier. Spend it on anything else at all and the bead is gone.

That makes holding a bead an active sport, and it makes it ratchet. Aim once for a rough +1, aim again at +1 and you'll likely settle to +2 or +3, again and you're at +4. The sniper who lies there breathing isn't sitting on a stale bonus; he is doing something, every beat, and can be interrupted at any of them.

It also caps itself, with no cap. The ceiling is +4, and once you're there another aim can only hold or lose it — a QR4 drops you from +4 to +1. So you aim until you're satisfied and then take the shot, because the next aim is pure risk. Nothing has to forbid over-aiming; the mechanic simply stops paying.

Recoil lands here, where it belongs. Firing spends the bead, and re-acquiring is an aim taken under recoil — an ordinary EF penalty, larger on a heavier weapon. Rate of fire then regulates itself physically: a battle rifle's second aimed shot is genuinely harder than a pistol's, with no rule saying "heavy weapons are slower." A moving target works the same way — tracking him is a penalty on every aim, so a bead on a runner is one you have to keep buying.

And aiming is not the same as taking more shots. Beats poured into one shot are concentration — you're still doing exactly one thing, and the Intense Action ladder leaves you alone. Beats spent taking more shots are division, and the ladder charges for each. Patience is free; greed is not.

And it makes the aimed shot visible. A bead is a roll, and a roll is a thing that happens where people can see it — which is why the shooter taking careful aim is also the shooter most likely to be spotted and pre-empted (below).

Defence: cover, position, and pre-emption

There is no roll to dodge a shot once fired — a bullet grants none of melee's cinematic grace. The defence against fire is not being shot at: cover, concealment, distance, and movement — run, and zig-zag, because a moving, unpredictable target is a hard one. The other half is anticipation, which is pure Initiative: someone lying in wait decides to take their shot, and if you notice — the muzzle swinging toward you — you can pre-empt and dive for cover before they fire. And aiming is itself an action you can react to: a shooter who takes a careful bead has shown you the threat, so a target who catches it gets to answer. The aimed shot is the deadlier one — and also the one its victim is likeliest to see coming.

Then: location and damage

A hit rolls hit location and applies damage through armor — both on Damage.

Designer's Note: ranged combat is where Score × EF is at its plainest — one roll, modifiers you can see and argue about — so this page mostly exists to name the four things other games quietly drop (you must know where it is, you must aim, firing wrecks your aim, the target resists) and to kill two reflexes: the automatic "+2 because unaware" (no — the bonus is the aim that being unobserved lets you take), and the belief that a wall is cover (it usually isn't).